This book contains mature themes and strong violence. If you are below 15 years of age, we recommend you do not continue reading.
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I’ve Just Begun To Awaken is a collection of poetry by اسام where she explores the new-self trope to effectively communicate to her audience themes of her personal experiences. She dives heavily into culture by implementing Arabic and appropriate notions in her poetry. Through this she shares the dynamics of being the eldest daughter in a Middle Eastern family, the hardships of being a refugee child, having to accustom to a new world/culture and the challenges that accompany these experiences.
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Over the course of 2023, a select group of young writers was invited to take part in a year-long writing program at Story Factory. Their goal was to produce a collection of poetry. This is one of the collections produced in these workshops.
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.
This project has been supported by the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund.
We would like to thank Midland Typesetters for generously typesetting these manuscripts. Thanks also to the poets who visited the workshops and shared their knowledge and passion: BEA, Eileen Chong, Jazz Money and Omar Sakr.